John Yoo in the news:

“What worries me is that the end of the NSA bulk collection program is taking away exactly the kind of tool we need for the kind of attacks we’re going to be getting in the future, which is going to be more dispersed, less like the 9/11 hijackers, and more like the Boston Marathon bombing.”

“You can’t tell right in the middle of the attack whether it is just a small-time person, a lone-wolf person, or someone who’s part of a bigger Al-Qaeda conspiracy, a bigger terrorist group. I worry that, under the Obama administration, our first instinct and option is to think that of it as law enforcement and civilian rather than keeping all our options open.”

President Barack Obama has finally resumed progress toward one of the most important strategic goals in American foreign policy: strengthening America’s alliance with India. … For the Obama administration and its successor, allying with the world’s largest democracy will represent a welcome seismic shift in the balance of power.

I hate to say it, but what President Obama’s trying to do, and this is a first for a modern-day president, is he’s trying to actually handcuff himself and his successor. If you actually take a moment to look at the proposal that he’s sent forward, it’s an incredible document, one unlike any a president has sent to Congress before. It limits his own powers.

“If the President may constitutionally permit 15% of the Nation’s illegal immigrant population to remain in the United States without fear of removal, why may he not do the same for 50% of that population, or for all of it?” they wrote in an article on the scope of the Take Care Clause.

John Yoo and Robert Delahunty article cited in Newsmax, November 18, 2014

“Can a president who wants tax cuts that a recalcitrant Congress will not enact decline to enforce the income tax laws? Can a president effectively repeal the environmental laws by refusing to sue polluters, or workplace and labor laws by refusing to fine violators?”

“If he wants to ruin the last two years of his presidency, I couldn’t think of a better way to do it, which is to bring the worst terrorist leaders … and house them in the United States somewhere. … If they come into the United States, they’re going to have the same rights as the … everyday criminals in the United States, but everyday American citizens, too.”

“Most countries in the Western world have a parliamentary democracy, whereby the executive branch derives its legitimacy and is held accountable to the legislature or parliament. We have a separately elected executive branch, and the Constitution allows our president to act quickly and efficiently in emergencies, especially when dealing with foreign affairs and national security.“

After 9/11 … we decided this would be a reasonable thing to do to try to find any more terrorists coming to the United States: by looking at phone numbers of people from abroad calling into the United States and what those phone numbers called—to try to detect patterns of enemy agents trying to infiltrate into the United States. That’s the purpose of the program.

“In Iraq … we are protecting our own national security against the terrorist group—the one that has said openly that wants to take actions against us and launch attacks on our homeland,” he said. “If this terrorist group is in Syria too, the U.S. has the right to pursue them. This was the thing that the Bush administration’s critics like President Obama were jumping up and down screaming about after the Iraq invasion.”

Liberals who favor tolerating other views seem amazed that there are other views. Such as the argument from John Yoo — a Berkeley law professor who served in Bush’s administration — that because presidents are “vested with all of the executive power of the federal government,” they are empowered “to initiate military hostilities to protect the national security.”

Under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. … This power should allow the president to attack countries and terrorist groups to prevent them from harming the U.S., even if not with an imminent attack.

“You have a president who basically has tried to reverse the major elements of the Bush policies, not just on terrorism, but on foreign policy. Under which administration is America’s situation better off?”

“I think it’s a rebuke to President Obama, but, at the same time, this decision plays the delicate task of trying to preserve presidential power for the next president. It still says that the president has this power to appoint lower executive branch officials during recess, but that President Obama stretched the power too far, even too far for all nine members of the Supreme Court.”

“Senator Paul is drunk on the publicity of pulling a stunt like speaking in Berkeley as a libertarian Republican. He’s getting a lot of praise for venturing into the lion’s den (as it were). . . . Paul was clever to raise the single issue on which his extreme libertarian views would find a sympathetic reception from a young crowd who were about anywhere from five to eight years old at the time of the 9/11 attacks and believe they have more to fear from the NSA wiretapping their smartphones (for what possible purpose?) than another terrorist attack.”

John Yoo interviewed on Fox News, February 22, 2014
“It’s a natural outgrowth of the policies that the Attorney General and the Obama Administration are pursuing by trying to use the civilian domestic criminal justice system to try terrorists and pirates.”

Laurent Mayali and John Yoo quoted in the Daily Journal, February 20, 2014 (registration required)
-Berkeley Law professor Laurent Mayali, one of the center’s co-directors, said the prime minister’s involvement, along with the high number of Berkeley alumni in the Korean legal system, will allow for a two-way conversation between the two communities. “It’s really a joint enterprise,” he said.

-Yoo, the other co-director, said the former prime minister was already providing guidance during his first visit to the center, speaking at an internal conference the university held on territorial disputes between China, Japan and Korea. “Obviously, having somebody who’s in the room who’s been a part of the head of the government, giving the perspective of Korea, to understand the problem, the facts, and so on—for us it’s invaluable,” Yoo said.

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